John Boehner: President Obama ‘on the ropes’

House Speaker John Boehner told donors at his party’s large March fundraising event that President Barack Obama’s second term was “supposed to be the president’s honeymoon, and our nightmare. Instead, he’s been the one on the ropes.”

“This isn’t the way the talking heads said it was supposed to be,” Boehner said at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s large March fundraiser at the National Building Museum in Washington on Wednesday evening.

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Boehner said the president is hamstrung because House Republicans are balancing the budget, while Obama doesn’t plan to.

The Ohio Republican told attendees at one of the party’s largest fundraisers of the year that the House Republican Conference is the “last line of defense” against what he thinks will be a left-leaning agenda from Obama if he captures the House in 2014, according to a source in the room.

“I don’t know what these next few months will bring, but I do know one thing,” Boehner said, according to a source in the room. “We are the minority here in Washington… We are the last line of defense. The president, his goal is to retake the House for Democrats and make Nancy Pelosi Speaker again. He’s got a whole laundry list of policies – like a “cap and trade” national energy tax – that he knows he can only get with a Democratic House. Greg Walden is working hard on a plan to put a stop to all this. But we need your help.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the headline speaker.

Former NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas got the party’s Ronald Reagan Award. Boehner, speaking at the dinner, credited Sessions with orchestrating the party’s “second-largest House majority since World War II.”